Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Applied Research in Education
Year: 2022
DOI:
[Fulltext]
Online Flipped Classroom Implementation In The Context Of University Doors Closure: A First-Semester Chemistry Course Case Study In Uruguay
Julia Torres, Nicolás Veiga
ABSTRACT:
Educational systems faced the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 which caused in 2020 the massive closure of schools, colleges and universities. In response to the crisis, online flipped classroom stood out as a very promising pedagogical approach, especially in higher education. In this model, unlike what happens in a normal flipped classroom, in-class significant learning activities like solving problems or deep discussions are carried out also by online learning. In the most common pedagogical structure of this approach, students watch recorded lectures, do some self-paced asynchronous activities and fill monitoring tasks before joint videoconference/chat synchronous meetings with educators. Since the forced implementation during university doors closure was unprecedented, the rapid assessment of experiences seems crucial to the immediate future of education. In this work, we studied the student behavior during the implementation of an online flipped classroom model in a first-year theoretical chemistry course at the Universidad de la República (Uruguayan public University) in the context of social confinement caused by COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that the general use of recorded materials is significantly lower than previous corresponding attendance to presential activities. Conversely, students comparatively concentrated their efforts on the forum activities and the active tools that foster proactivity within the available materials. According to Kendall’s tau-b values, the students’ usefulness perception of the interactive tools was increased (p < 0.05). This positive correlation is stronger for higher-level reading sections (18%), user-activated feedback (17%) and problem-solving clues (14%).
keywords: active learning; COVID-19; descriptive statistical tools; interactive learning tools; student preferences.